Night after night, the first and generally only line Steve Stirling tinkers with is Alexei Yashin’s top unit. The coach has shown that if you blow an assignment in the defensive zone or don’t get back on “D” with enough purpose, he’ll yank you off the ice and sit you for long stretches on the bench.

Especially if your name is Mariusz Czerkawski, who generally plays right wing next to Yashin, but frequently can be found nailed to the bench for huge chunks of games the last few weeks.

“It seems like I have to be perfect,” Czerkawski said.

For a time, the line consisting of Yashin, Czerkawski and left wing Oleg Kvasha was perfect. For the first month of the season, they were one of the more potent trios in the NHL, scoring more than half of the Isles’ first 30 goals. Passes went from tape-to-tape, across the cage and through a maze of defenders, only to continually find their way to the back of the enemy net. Kvasha was the set-up man, Yashin the powerful playmaker along the wall, and Czerkawski the nimble sniper who racked up 11 goals in the blink of an eye to start the season.

But those happy days are very much over, as Czerkawski hadn’t scored in 10 games going into last night’s Coliseum match against the hard-working Thrashers. For his apparent lack of effort, Czerkawski has split time next to Yashin with Arron Asham and a conglomerate of fourth-line scrap that includes Justin Mapletoft and Justin Papineau.

Of all the lines he deploys, Yashin’s is the unit Stirling tinkers with the most.

“I’m happy with the others,” Stirling said. “Why mess with the others? The others are working hard, doing pretty well. They’re gonna be fine. It’s a nice group of guys. I’ve been happy with the group. Until you get it going, why mess with three [lines] when you only have to mess with one?

“When they’ve struggled, all three [Yashin, Kvasha and Czerkawski] have struggled. It hasn’t been just one or two. So that line, I bounce guys around, trying to find the right mix to play with Yashin, because he’s a key to their success, with the power play and five-on-five he’s a skilled player.

The Islanders have toyed with playing just about every wing they have with Yashin at some point over the last two-plus seasons. For the first month of the season, it appeared that Kvasha, No. 12, and Czerkawski, No. 21, were the perfect compliments to No. 79.

“I’ve got to surround him with the right guys,” Stirling said. “When it was going well, it was 12 and 21. When it wasn’t going well, then you saw what you saw the last few games. The other night in the third period I thought they were pretty good. I thought they were our best line in the third period, offensively.”